All in a Name
by aragonite
Summary: More fun with names. From G. Lestrade to Athelney...Jones.
1. Chapter 1

Lestrade was only half-listening at first. Who could blame him? He had his fingers wrapped around his first bottle of Grozet in a fortnight. A more than unusual double suicide pact had not made life any less complicated for himself—or for the Yard—but the flurry had died down, irrevocable proof produced for the case itself, and no one had to be arrested. Praise be, Gregson had vocalized what they were all thinking when the last bit of paper had been toted off to its rightful home in the archives. No arrests. That was half the paperwork gone right then and there.

"Unless you're the priest," Hopkins pointed out. "He's the one that has to think of something polite for the funeral sermon."

"Perhaps he can just make something up." Gregson managed to single-handedly scandalize three Constables, one Chief Constable, and four Inspectors all in one fell blow. He lifted his hand and signaled the usual hardluck boy who was in charge of their table in the corner.

"Gregson, I _don't_ think a priest can make something up." Inspector Morton said it as gently as possible, but Constable Forbes was turning a dangerous color around his leather collar and Hopkins was still gasping for air.

Lestrade only wanted his Grozet. He tried very hard to ignore the present in hopes for his better future. A familiar little face darted through the crowd and on automatic reflex, he reached out and snagged the boy.

"Toby, give the bartender back his wallet and help Ronald with the drinks." Lestrade shook the ill-gotten means out of the child's oversized pocket, put it in his hands, and turned him in the right direction.

"Speaking of making things up," Chief Constable Neil shook his head. "How long before his grandmother catches on as to what he's really learning with that money she set aside for his education?"

"Heaven knows." Lestrade sank into the bench and put his back against the wall with a sigh. "I'm still trying to get him to understand this 'game' his late father taught him has sad consequences."

"Back to the original topic," Hopkins persisted. "A priest really can't come up with some sort of fairy tale."

"Well it's for a good cause." Gregson was nothing if not persistent. And wiley. "Think of the trauma when the Dowager is faced with the truth in public?"

Lestrade sighed and tuned it all out as the Constables gleefully took their usual table with their Chief in the opposite corner. He personally didn't care a fig about the Dowager Duchess. She was plated cast iron in all directions and no doubt unfazed at the thought of a relative or two who took the coward's way out over some mismatched bank records. Suicide was _certainly_ a more attractive option than being left to face that dragon.

Toby Irish popped back up into the vertical sea of humanity and plopped two chill glass bottles before him. Lestrade traded it for a small coin, which was taken happily. Oh, finally. Nothing left to do but enjoy his drinks and watch Gregson try to yank poor Hopkins into another drinking contest. Lestrade didn't know who to sympathize with more—Hopkins, who could drink all night without a wobble but who hated the taste of most forms of alcohol…

…or Gregson, who seemed to think that the last three times Hopkins had put him under the table was some sort of fluke…

"…what do you say, Lestrade?"

"Mn?" Lestrade jumped slightly, and realized after a quick mental inventory the discussion had gone from Reasons Why Priests Can't Lie to…_him_. How had that happened?

Gregson sighed. "Names. What people are called."

Another mental stumble. "We're discussing name-calling?"

"Nooo, we're discussing how most of us are somewhat less than ecstatic over the choice of our parents' naming. Case in point. You."

"Me?" This called for another swallow of ale. "In what way?"

"Well, you always sign your name G. Lestrade. If you've written it out, I'm sure I've never seen it."

What was it about certain questions that caused an unplanned moment of perverse gaming? "Gregson, I don't _have_ to spell it out—I'm the _only_ Lestrade at the Yard—and thank God for that, I might add."

"I'll concede the point," Gregson said—doggedly. Lestrade wondered why everyone said he was the most stubborn Inspector at Whitehall? When Gregson got going, he could hammer reason into a tree-trunk. "But it doesn't change the fact that you never write your name out, and it's most likely for the reason that you don't like your baptismal name any better than we like ours."

"What have you got against Tobias?" Lestrade had to know.

Gregson scowled at him, but put out. "My father was a Biblical scholar. When he was told I had the right number of eyes, ears, noses, fingers and toes and without any discernible birth defect, he said, "God is Good" which is what Tobias means."

"Oh." Lestrade lifted his ale in a salute. "That's…quite a story. You have…an interesting father."

"He's a sodding lunatic." Gregson contradicted rudely. "Spends more time dickering about with his secret anti-paperlouse powder than he does with living humans."

Bradstreet chuffed. "Hah. D'you think that's a rum job? What do you think the naming options are in the middle of the island?" He didn't wait for an answer, which gave Lestrade time for another gulp.

The big man nursed his pint of Oatmeal Stout inside his large hands. Large mustaches bristled like the feelers on a cat, and giving him a temporary familial resemblance to Inspector Morton. "People joke the Scots are stingy…they have nothing on the Bradstreets." He said gloomily. "The name Roger's been around since the bloomin' Medieval times in the family, back to when there was an ancestor fighting for hire."

"Ah. "Renowned spearman." Hopkins noted. "Why is it a stingy name?"

Roger glared. "Because there's one in every generation! My family can't throw _anything_ away, and that includes names! Every so many years, someone new is saddled with it. Not any of my sons, though. The plague stops here." He mashed the plank table with his thumb.

"One up you," Morton snorted. "Morris Morton." He paused. "Middle name…Andrew."

A polite but disturbed silence filtrated over the table as everyone inevitably lined up the first letters of his names and came up with good reason to be frequently beaten on in childhood. Hopkins winced.

"Stanley," Hopkins picked up the punch. "Stane, lea. Stony meadow. Another dusty old English name the family keeps in the attic when they want to remember the glorious ancestral history—which I'm certain is half myth while the other half is outright drunken lying."

"Well we may be heading to drunkenness," Morton pointed out, "but thanks to our forefathers, we needn't lie at all."

"So." Gregson hammered. "What's the story behind Geoffrey?"

"What about guessing?" Bradstreet asked wickedly.

"But—" Lestrade began.

"Geoffrey of Monmouth?" Morton wondered.

Lestrade felt his jaw click open. "Why would you guess _that_?" He wondered.

"Well, you're a Breton, and Geoffrey of Monmouth is Welsh," Morton said as if that solved many problems at once.

"That's not a bad guess." Bradstreet chipped in. "Aren't the Welsh the closest kin to the Brets right after the Cornish?"

"Hold on, Geoffrey of Monmouth was supposed to be a Breton to begin with, wasn't he?" Gregson wondered.

Everyone paused to look at Gregson.

"I... thought you avoided anything and everything that smacked of Catholicism." Hopkins observed.

"I do. But my father is a layspeaker."

Everyone looked at each other. They didn't understand.

Gregson sighed, long-suffering. "He studies everything. And he likes to talk about it at the breakfast-table." Gregson looked sour. "Every day."

"You must have a lot in your head." Morton commented. Lestrade had been thinking something along those lines himself--only not as politely.

"Far too much." Gregson muttered over his beer--it was like his tobacco. Questionable. "Methodism is all well and good, but there's a great number of them that take great serenity in facts."

Lestrade sighed. "Let's get this over with. My mother liked the works of Geoffrey Chaucer."

"That's it?"

"What do you mean, Hopkins? 'That's it?'" Lestrade decided he would put up with perhaps a few more moments of this before he went back to the peace and quiet of his own thoughts.

"Well...how do you feel about your name?" Hopkins demonstrated yet again his admirably healthy backbone.

"Hmph." Lestrade glowered. "You're asking a man with a _French _surname, in _London_, if he minds having _one _name acceptably English." He gave the youngest Inspector a sardonic salute. "It got me out of getting thrashed at least once by a group of vaguely anti-French bullies."

"Wouldn't know how that felt myself." Gregson said with that horrible confidence that was the mixed admiration and exasperation of the Yard. "Nobody wants to touch a layspeaker's son."

"Still wouldn't, I imagine." Morton said dryly.

"Huh. Cleverness becomes you, Morris." Gregson retorted. They were still continuing the debate on who should assist who's case as punishment half an hour later when they were leaving. Hopkins had already departed long since, wanting to socialize a bit with some of his old mates at the Constables' table.

"That went rather well." Bradstreet commented. "I'm impressed.

"You ought to be." Lestrade complained. "That poppycock about the Welsh…my _word_, Bradstreet!" Slightly tipsy (no one should have to endure a debate with Gregson in it, sober), he put the next empty bottle in a neat row by the others. Bradstreet was still making inroads on his oatmeal stouts.

"Wasn't poppycock." Bradstreet protested.

"It was poppycock. You know full well how I got my name."

Bradstreet snickered. "That's because you were drunk when you confessed."

"And you were too drunk to be anything but nauseating in your sympathy. Spare me. Americans wonder why the English race always speaks to their closest friends by their surnames...well there's the un-lovely explanation. First names are more trouble than they're worth."

"As if I'm going to argue with you... Have you idea what happens at the family reunions when someone calls for Roger?"

Both men snickered in unified agreement. Just as quickly, utmost relief washed over the humour.

"Thank GOD he didn't go into middle names."

"I nearly choked on my ale when Morton mentioned his. If Gregson would have chosen a time to deviate on that subject..."

"Don't." Roger shuddered. "Don't even call that down upon us."

"Not to worry." Lestrade sighed and closed his eyes a moment, enjoying the feel of the wall against his back. "What do you say we go find a platter of fried oysters somewhere, Roger T. Bradstreet?"

"Excellent idea, G.B. Lestrade."

"And while we're at it..." Lestrade opened one eye. "Should this topic ever come up..."

"Yessss?" Bradstreet asked slowly.

"I'll make up a plausible fairytale on why your middle name is Thomas if you make up something about my middle name."

"Deal. What would you like? Bartholomew? Bres? Bors? Bertie?"

"You can say it stands for Boron, Borax, Begonia, or _Bumblebee _for all I care--you just aren't going to tell them the truth." Lestrade said firmly. "_Are _you?"

Bradstreet shook his head firmly. "Not a word. What are friends for?"

"In this case? My middle name is a tale for which the Yard will never be prepared."

"That's because truth is stranger than fiction." Bradstreet said confidently. "And sometimes, a lot funnier."

"Says the man who was named after--" Lestrade caught his best friend's expression and held up his hand. "Peace. Let's get to those oysters."


	2. Chapter 2

_Some of us have often wondered if Peter Jones (REDH) and Athelney Jones (SIGN) are the same person; it is quite likely. I leave the proof to my betters, but an interesting note came up once in that some pastiche writers hyphenate his name. This was fairly unlikely, as that was an upperclass affectation; regular people would have simply made their mother's maiden name into their middle name (Laura Ingalls Wilder). At any rate, I wanted to have some fun with the drunk Yarders again. _

It pays to enrich your Victorian Word Power:

**Lush**: an alcoholic drink

**Lushery**: An establishment of relaxed standards that serves alcoholic drinks

**Lushington**: A drunkard.

-

"Athelney Jones."

There was a pause about the seedy little tavern—which was nowhere near the high standards of filth at their last gathering.

"Peter." The Inspector looked about him. "_Athelney_," he said slowly and clearly. Each bald syllable hovered over the dust-smeared tabletop that bore the track-marks of many lifted and lowered drinking vessels. "_Jones_."

Gregson shifted slightly in his chair (it creaked badly, so he stopped). "_Eruhm_," he cleared his throat. "We know your name, lad."

"The drinks aren't _that_ strong," Bradstreet agreed, but there was a faint note of complaint to that statement. This close to the Daft Days, they had a right to be less than sober.

"It's not about that," the Inspector declared, somewhat strongly out of his annoyance. "I _know_ you know what my name is. You _know_ what my name is."

"I ought to hope so," Lestrade leaned into one hand, the other still wrapped around some sort of awful pear wine Hopkins had persuaded him to try. The brilliant green colour hadn't put him off, which just proved the little rat had more courage than sense. "Isn't that the first thing they ask you when you're taking the Policeman's tests?"

Bradstreet snorted and clapped the smaller man on the back. Green stuff came out of the bottleneck and spilt on the table.

"Blast that…fool of a rag…" Inspector Jones swayed slightly—more from his indignation than the amount of alcohol in his brain. "Giving me a hyphen! Have I ever been a bloomin' "Athelney-Jones" to any of you?"

Lestrade and Hopkins, who were directly across from each other, traded a single look. _"Oh, no,"_ that look said. _"He's off."_ Their comrade didn't "off" often, but when he did, it was memorable. Like a summer squall it was loud, occasionally violent, and there was nothing to do but get under shelter and wait for the blow to pass over.

"Now I can understand that from an American rag," Mr. Detective-Inspector Peter Athelney _Jones_ began afresh. "But not from an honest, red-blooded John Bull of a rag like the _Times_."

"It is unlikely," Hopkins cleared his throat, "but when you think about it, it isn't outside the realm of possibility."

"Realm my mother's favourite tatts." Was the horrifying retort. "If she were alive, she'd be chasing that rag-man of a writer down with her broom." Depressed, the big man slouched forward, his elbows on the table, adding to the dust. "She had a big broom," he added, possibly to himself. "Her father was a broom-maker."

Hopkins released a tiny, tiny sigh of equal parts sympathy and worrisome frustration. Unfortunately, Lestrade caught it.

"Hopkins," the older Inspector drawled (it occurred to Hopkins that Lestrade had a ripe opportunity for getting back at him for that bottle), "You look a little bewildered."

"I…came in late, as you know." Hopkins could use the truth to his advantage, and had no problems with looking ignorant. "What's going on, if I might inquire?" There was a touch of timidity to that last bit; he wasn't certain of the value of extending this obviously painful conversation.

Lestrade knocked back another drink, never turning a hair as Bradstreet sought his own solace in his pint. "Simple." He said heavily. "The _Times_, which normally aims to a high standard, managed to make stable-bedding out of our Inspector's work at the Gallery forgings. The forgers in charge were confused with the informers—that'll make for some interesting explaining to their wives when they get home, assuming they get home in one piece—and then they bollixed his name up. Instead of a good, solid, normal "Inspector Peter Athelney Jones," they put in "Inspector Athelney (hyphen) Jones."

A hyphenated name was the lot (or contrivance, to hear Gregson) of the higher echelons, who were as unwilling to part with their surnames at the splicing of marriage, as they were unwilling to throw themselves into the Serpentine in January. As one could only belong to Scotland Yard if they started from the ground up (ensuring no self-respecting gentleman would join the ranks of Constables), the mistake was clear.

Hopkins winced. "Oh." He said. It was all he said. It was all he could say.

"They'll print a retraction tomorrow," Gregson sounded so confident everyone knew he was lying through his cracked upper molar. "Just you see."

"Don't want their blooming apology." "Bad enough I get a rotten cabbage thrown at me every night I walk home by my own nephews. Everyone thinks I got airs as it is for joining the Metro. My own mum, she wouldn't have any of this, I tell you. Plain Athelney. That's all. None of that blue-blooded stuff and nonsense."

"You _are_ aware that the only reason why we can have this conversation freely is because we're in an establishment that's as far from being "elevated" as Darwin's gnats." Gregson, when he chose to show off his better education, could do so with alarming results. "So you might as well vent off the stopcock, Jones. Tomorrow's another day and I guarantee there'll be a toff at the end of it."

"Athelney Jones." The poor man grumbled into his nearly empty cup; his voice vibrated a basso echo back into his face. "Athelney…Jones."

Hopkins leaned slightly towards Lestrade. "Has he been this way for long?"

"Depends on where we're starting with this, Hopkins. Are we talking since this morning when he first saw the paper, or are we talking about the argument his parents had on his name before he was born?" Lestrade poured the rest of his ghastly vintage out and sipped with a bland expression. "As legend has it, that was the one and only time his parents ever fought."

"Really." Hopkins couldn't help but be impressed.

"Yes. I don't think his mother _really_ put his father in the hospital, though. It makes for a nice story, but stretches the credibility a bit, wouldn't you agree?"

"Credibility?" Bradstreet pointed at the bottle. "I'll show you a cred. How could you drink that garbage? Looks like creamed spinach."

"Number one, I haven't a thing against creamed spinach," Lestrade's overly bright eyes suggested he was well on his way to feeling not-so-much-pain himself. "Secondly, it's just a perry with enough parsley in it for a kick." He leaned back, one arm folded behind his head for a pillow, possibly protecting his hair from the grime on the high-backed chair he was in. "Hopkins recommended it as a tonic after that punch I got at the warf."

"Oh, the double kidney shot?" Gregson cringed, as did everyone else. "Too bad he didn't get you in a nicer spot…like the kneecaps."

"Seems to be helping…" Lestrade shrugged. "My word, it has been a long day."

"It'll be even longer tomorrow." Bradstreet watched as their guest of honour rose up and made his uneven way back to the tender for another round of drinks. "In fact, I think we're in for a long night."

"We're supposed to be celebrating," the normally laconic Inspector Morton pointed out. When things grew emotional, he tended to bow out into tweedy silence, speaking as little as possible. This was an extenuating moment. "As hard as that poor man worked getting those forgers to justice…we should be here lifting toasts and getting him drunk and happy, not drunk and glum."

"We're up to suggestions," Gregson said, just before Jones returned to slam down a heavy platter of assorted objects before them. Bread rolled off the dish and was quickly caught up by Hopkins, who brushed the dust off with alacrity. Too late, he realized he had committed himself to that particular chunk.

Jones muttered yet still. "I put it to you, when has anyone from the higher class ever condescended to come down from the heavens to join our ranks?" The man was growing more upset by the moment. "I ask you."

"That's not it," Gregson protested. "It's the mandatory law that anyone who wants to join the Yard has to start up from the bottom. Can you imagine one of those spoiled, well-fed toffy boys walking a twenty mile day in heavy boots?"

"Or walking twenty mile at all." Bradstreet smirked. "Not a fair law, that. Wouldn't you adore seeing that? I'd bribe a barrister to pass that law!"

"Or dealing with their first angry mob." Lestrade suddenly snickered.

"Let's _not_ use Lestrade as an example," Bradstreet warned. "Not everyone was fortunate enough to get locked up in a 200-person riot on his third day of work."

"Oh, and you were any better?" Lestrade sniffed childishly. "Dropping a bag of evidence all over your future father-in-law's feet on your _first_ day."

"What was the evidence?" Hopkins whispered to Gregson.

"Assorted body parts." Gregson whispered back. "A bit ripe."

"That doesn't count." Bradstreet snorted. "He didn't know me from Adam that day."

"No, but three months later, old 'Basilisk' caught you dancing with his only daughter…_he remembered you then_." Lestrade pointed out gleefully. "_Then_ he remembered you as the blushing PC standing guard for all those arrested ladybirds."

Hopkins suddenly started laughing. As they turned to look at him, he foundered, half-eaten rye in his hand. It only made him laugh the harder.

"Morton," Jones stared, "how long does it take for ergot to enter the bloodstream after ingestion?"

"A touch longer than _that_."

"No, no…s'just…" Hopkins sputtered for a moment further, wiping his eyes as he struggled for breath and enough calm to talk. "I just had a mental image of the Home Secretary sitting down with his panel, discussing this law." He staggered through another peal of laughter, the stale bread forgotten.

"I suppose that could be quite amusing," Morton mused, "if one had enough to drink."

"Forget it." Gregson snapped bitterly. "Hopkins could never drink that much."

"My deductive skills inform me that in view of that evidence, there is something genuinely amusing at the bottom of this," Bradstreet leaned back in his chair and helped himself to the slivered beef off the platter.

"I just had a bout of imagination," Hopkins managed to explain once he was under control. "The concerned fathers wanting their precious sons to go join the military under some fancy patronage rather than do something as demeaningly dangerous as joining the Metro…" The young man swayed slightly, exhausted from his mirth. "As if we're much safer than taking the Queen's shilling."

"We're not." Lestrade said flatly. "Dr. Watson told me to my face that most of Afghanistan, combined with the tiger-infested mangrove swamps of India was safer than Saffron Hill to the Estuary. When I told him the average assault against the police was 25% a year he was astonished it was that low."

"Did you tell him name-calling and rotten cabbages don't count?" Morton wondered.

"The name-calling, yes. I forgot about the cabbages."

"For shame on you, Ratty. Mr. Holmes would tell you it's the small details that matter." Gregson admonished with tone and wagging finger.

"That's why I have _you_, Euclid."

"You know, it's probably for the protection of those lovely sons that the law was passed." Hopkins finally came to the point of his hilarity. "Can you imagine all the _fun_ we'd have?" He thus supplied examples: "Sending them all over London for a left-handed whistle…or telling them the Thames division needed someone to supervise the hookmen?"

Gregson spluttered, narrowly keeping from spraying the table just in time. "Now come on, lad. The left-handed whistle is a classic!"

"What about the ambidextrous truncheon?" Lestrade smiled fondly at the memories. "Or that time we took Johnson's tea-can and replaced it with whiskey?"

"That was a prank?" Morton wondered.

"He was a teetotaler. Didn't forgive us for three years. Apparently, it was a _very_ good tea we sacrificed."

"Sacrifice nothing. I drank it." Gregson sniffed. "Gave me a dicky heart for half the day. You _can_ overbrew a leaf."

"So that's what started you on the road to ruin." Lestrade shuddered.

"Come off it, Lestrade. My tea isn't that strong."

"Tobias Gregson, the Gipsies I work with say your pot is too strong. _The Gipsies_, Gregson!" Lestrade was definitely getting comfortable with his drink. "Between you and the Dooleys, I'll either be put under early, or I'll be preserved like a bog-man and stagger through existence an extra thirty years."

"Free choice is involved, Ratty. Like that green stuff you just drank."

"It's not all that bad once you get past the third glass."

"Pass."

"Sherlock Holmes." Morton spoke up. As always when he spoke in a social setting, it was a surprise. The man had a thoughtful expression as he swirled a cheap port. "Send the poor little blighters to Sherlock Holmes to consult a case now and then. Bet you a deuce to a deaner, he'll have 'em in tears three minutes after the hello."

"That's because their skins are too thin." Hopkins answered, pausing for one last snicker. "Comes from bein' raised in a nice warm house and never miss a meal…good education…always in the black with the doctor's bills…Sundays off for Chapel…a savings account with three-percent interest…vacations to the sea-side every summer…pheasants in winter…" His eyes widened as an ugly note entered his voice.

"…social parties, first-class train tickets...equestrian lessons, wise investments…smothering hens to demand every bloomin' minute of your time during the day all anted up at the dinner table while the gran scolds the maid for putting up flowers that clash with the wall-paper…"

The other Inspectors traded looks.

"Ahem…Stanley…"

"Damn it!" Hopkins smashed his fist into the table. Dust went up; Lestrade started. "I want them to join the Metro!" He spoke petulantly. "Can't we sign a petition or something?"

"Er, yes, yes we can." Jones said quickly. In the face of some obviously agonizing and long-buried past history in the Hopkins family, Jones had quite forgotten his own grief. "I have it on my desk. We'll all sign it tomorrow."

"Good." Hopkins was too drunk to realize the blatancy of the lie being told him. Pacified thus, he was soon resting his no-doubt spinning head in his arms. "Wouldn't know the crabshells they were wearin' from the crabshells they step on by the Thames," was a last mutter before he passed out.


	3. Scotland Yard Synonyms

This is more Holiday fun with the Yard. And Sherlock Holmes is here...in spirit...the 'Greek profile' comment is a little smiling comment on Colin Jeavons' Greekish profile. I doubt Gregson would be able to resist.

-

"Imbecile."

"Unimaginative."

"Oblivious."

"Totally devoid of reason…"

"We already have that one down, Roger."

"Sorry." Bradstreet thought for a moment. "Disappointing?"

"Oh, that's a good one." Lestrade accordingly chalked it next to the others. "_And_ frequently used."

Hopkins was frowning in deep thought. "He's never held back, has he?"

"Well, no, I think that would defeat the purpose." Gregson mused. He leaned back in his chair, which was barely enough to support his weight. It was at least clean if not luxurious, like the rest of the tavern. The Metro had it all to themselves for the night. "Speaking of holding back, Hopkins, I've never seen anyone drink so much in my entire life and not walk out in a wooden box."

Hopkins scowled at him. "It wasn't that much."

"Of course." Gregson drawled.

"Seriously, Gregson. I don't like strong drink enough to...well, drink it." Hopkins had finally, after nearly ten years as a sergeant before becoming a detective-sergeant, joined the ranks of those who can't remember the interesting things they'd done at the last party. Following tradition, Scotland Yard let him keep his illusions.

"Come on, now." Lestrade knocked on the chalk-board for everyone's attention. "You know the rules. Keep adding to the pile or start drinking again."

Gregson shuddered. "You know, holidays once had a sacred connotation…"

"Drinking _is_ sacred." MacDonald piped up.

"You know, we could be here all night." Lestrade mused. "In the sake of everyone surviving, perhaps we should change our rules a bit."

"Well, we shouldn't write down all those annoying little foreign phrases he likes to use when he's being clever." Gregson noted.

"When he's being clever? When is he not being clever?"

"Point to Hopkins for sheer obviousness."

"And let's leave off the rare compliments, even though they qualify as criticism too." Lestrade said thoughtfully.

"Maybe we'll get home at a decent hour." MacDonald said doubtfully.

"What are you complaining about? I don't think he's ever called you any names besides 'Mac.'"

"Well he's called Scotland Yard plenty of things, and I'm a Yarder…"

"Did we agree to use his blanket assertions on our en masse intelligence?" Youghal wanted to know. "I can't remember."

"That's because you're drinking the Oban." Bradstreet pointed out. "I told you to go careful on that. It causes amnesia."

"Here's what we have so far," Lestrade took a step back, and traded his chalk for his wineglass. "Three incidents of being called a 'mathom'—with thanks to Bradstreet and Mac for even knowing what the silly word _means_—two cases of 'limited intelligence' and an unknown number of imbeciles, no more than twenty, but no less than thirteen…" That called for a drink. "Half of them directly attributed to yours truly; a surprisingly low tally on being called a fool, but perhaps it isn't an interesting enough word for our Mr. Holmes."

"If we included those annoying French quotes, we'd have 'fool' outnumbering everything else." Bradstreet pointed out. He was beginning to enjoy himself.

"This is England. We're speaking English. Foreign words aren't going to count." Lestrade shot his hand up, arresting the inevitable crack. "And, Gregson, we are permitting mathom because it is being used by the northerners, and the Scots, last time I checked, are part of the island."

"Well, what if we used French? It's the language of the Guernsey islands."

"You don't speak French on Guernsey." Lestrade said in his most scathing tones. "You speak Guernésiais, which is not French. At all."

"It sure _sounds_ French." Gregson persisted stubbornly. There were days when Lestrade had no problems with his French extraction, but this was clearly not one of them. Usually, these moods corresponded _somewhere _to Mr. Holmes, who not only had French roots, but also French education. And for some reason, he could never resist throwing about a French quote or three whenever he was around Lestrade.

Lestrade smashed the table with his palms, leaning his suddenly-considerable height over the surface to glare down at his rival. "Nobody on the Isles under Crown protection beneath the title of the Duke of Normandy (which happens to be the Queen, God bless her), of Guernsey, Alderney, Sark, Herm, Jethou, Brecqhou, Burhou, Lihou and the other islets of the Channel speak _French_. They speak _Norman_, which is Guernésiais, Jèrriais, Sercquiais, and Auregnais with English and some Breton tossed in—_French is a myth_!"

"You said all of that without drawing a breath," Gregson admired. "I'm impressed down to my fat white hands."

"_Listen to me while I'm shouting at you, Gregson! We are not using French!"_

"Well what about Greek?" Gregson wondered. "Greek was here for a while."

Lestrade gnashed his teeth. "I doubt even the great polymath of insults, Mr. Sherlock Holmes, would be calling us names in third-century Greek."

"But if he did, we could use it," Gregson argued. "And he'd probably wonder why you didn't."

"_Bretons are not Greek, you algorithm of idiocy_!"

"No? For God's sake, _look_ at yourself. That nose is _proof_ the Greeks got tragically lost on the west coast." Gregson managed to impress all with his bravery by pulling out his little notebook. "Algorithm of idiocy…I need to remember that one," he muttered to himself as he wrote it down.

"You'd best enjoy your profile, Gregson, while you've still got it…"

"MOVING ALONG," Bradstreet bellowed, "we've got twelve cases of unimaginative, and…wait a moment. Has anyone been called dull-minded?"

A show of hands went up.

"Good thinking, Bradstreet." Lestrade grumpily turned his back to Gregson and added it. "At the rate you're going, you'll be the only sober one standing by eight."

"Insensate." Youghal suddenly snapped his fingers.

"Anserine." Hopkins clapped his hands. "I had to look that one up when I got home."

"So what does it mean?"

"Acting like a goose. He wasn't aiming it me, it was Inspector Johnson, but still."

"We can still count it...Johnson is anserine. ah, _trivial_." Lestrade remembered a past incident involving a smuggled chicken.

"Ill-advised."

"Obtuse and puerile."

"Two points for Bradstreet…"

"Unconversant."

"Stolid."

"Oh, that's a _good_ one. I've been called that by lots of newspapers." MacDonald said approvingly. "One paper even thought it was a compliment."

"There's over five hundred papers in business. Chances are they aren't all the same high quality…"

"Doltish…that's a word a _proper gentleman_ uses instead of stupid." Lestrade was chuckling to himself. "Didn't he imply we were both being doltish over that laundry affair, Roger?"

"That and…oh, wait just a moment…" Bradstreet screwed up his face in thought. "Futile!"

"That's another word the papers like to use."

"Shortsighted." Youghal paused to pass the bottle to Hopkins. "Anyone besides me been called that?"

"I think I have," Lestrade confessed. "But maybe not. I was concussed at the time."

"He called you that while you had a head injury?" Hopkins' mouth collapsed open. "That's cruel!"

"Not really, Hopkins. He didn't know I was concussed at the time. Come to think of it, I didn't either."

"How can you _not_ know you were concussed?"

"It was dark and in a very vile stable. While we were apprehending a jewel thief, I felt a spooked horse kicking past my head, and I didn't think anything of it. Later on we collaborated under a streetlight and Dr. Watson suddenly screeches, "_What the devil_??" and I said, "_What_??" Lestrade mimed a copious flow of blood down half his face.

"I remember that!" Bradstreet hooted, smacking his hand on the tabletop. "I helped 'em get you home and Clea read you the Assembly for getting blood all over that coat!"

"Ouch." Gregson winced. "You were cursed-out in Lanky! That's got to be the worst next to Billinsgate."

"It worked out all right in the end, though. After hearing Clea sauce me as an 'addled barmpot, a clotyheaded noddy,' Mr. Holmes paid me more than my usual fee."

"Goodness. You _were_ sauced."

"The best part of it was Mr. Holmes tried to apologize for getting her husband in a state." Bradstreet laughed. "Her response was along the lines of 'not to worry, Mr. Holmes, it's just another head wound.'" He cleared his throat and did his level best to approximate Mrs. Lestrade's Lanky dialect. _"Not tae worry, Mr. Holmes; tha's no oyl in 'is lamp."_

"Yes. She _acts_ like they're not a deal in public." Lestrade said sourly. "But when the doors are shut it's another story entire."

"Threatened to make you sleep in the pig-coyte, didn't she?"

"Yes, but as we didn't _have_ one, she settled for making me drink quite an _awful_ brew and had the satisfaction of stitching me up."

"I wish my wife could stitch _me_ up." Youghal sighed enviously. "That's marvelous."

"Are we starting to hit the bottom on the invectives?" MacDonald wondered.

"Lestrade, you're the expert on the name-calling. What do you think?"

"Possibly." Lestrade said thoughtfully. "Any others?"

"I dunno. Is deliramentous even a word?" Inspector Gregory wondered.

"Hopkins, you've had the best education of all of us."

"I had to look up anserine!" Hopkins protested. After a moment's thought he said, "Well, delirament means a foolish story..."

"Desipient." Sam Brown piped up.

"Goodness. What did you do to earn a word like _that_?" Gregson put down his glass to stare.

"I have no idea. I don't even know what it means."

"I think it's another word for foolishness." Hopkins offered tentatively.

"I got one!" Forrester held up his glass. "Musard!"

"You can always tell when Mr. Holmes is reading his Classics." Gregson muttered. "Badaud."

"We're entering the territory of the terribly creative, aren't we?" Hopkins commented. "Hebetude. There's something you aren't called every day."

"We're starting to run out of chalk-board," Lestrade was unsurprised. "Gregson, pick up your pencil with your fat white hand and transcribe this. I'll erase and we can start afresh."

Brown sighed despondently. "You know, London just isn't going to be the same until Mr. Holmes gets back from the Continent."

-

_mathom: a treasure, but James Blish had a Scotsman explain it in a book as 'a totally useless object.'_


	4. Past History

Somewhere in the duty halls of Holmesian Writing, it is mentioned that perhaps Doyle's "Peter Jones" and "Athelney Jones" were the same person, a "Peter Athelney Jones" who didn't want to be confused with the department store, the "Peter Jones" on King's Road.

So we can lay the blame right there.

-

"If you love your life, do _not_ approach Jones tonight."

The warning was given in a way and location behind Inspector Hopkins' left ear that the inevitable occurred: A fair portion of the young man's drink atomised into the smoke-clad atmosphere of the _Elegant Barley_.

"Bradstreet—!" Hopkins sputtered for air and coherency (first he had to line the right words up in the proper order) while wiping his mouth with his sleeve—something he hadn't done since he was eight years old. The ghost of his still quite-alive-but-draconic grandmother instantly rose in his conscience, and he quickly dropped to search for a handkerchief. The _Barley_ was a cut above, but it wasn't the place where one expected to find napkins.

By that time, Bradstreet had ample time to take a seat, order a drink, collect it, and start off the top of a bitter.

"What's the matter with you?" Hopkins demanded.

"Just giving you fair warning."

Hopkins peered across the _Barley_, which was as thick as a proud London fog. He could barely make out Jones pushed up against the battered plank wall. He was talking quite earnestly with several of the other blokes—Hopkins recognized a few of the hard-bitten and slightly bitter men off the Whitehall District. "He seems to be all right enough, Bradstreet…"

Jones punched a man in sergeant stripes into a support pillar, picked him up, turned him upside down, and used the shaken-out contents of his pockets to buy himself another drink.

"You were about to say, 'never mind?'" Bradstreet guessed shrewdly.

"Er, yes." Hopkins thought swiftly. He took an overly large swallow, and found his pint empty. He signaled for another one. Nothing like a mug to hide your face. "Might I ask what event brought him to such a low state?"

"Dear John Wesley. You didn't hear about it?" Bradstreet put his pint down before he could disgrace himself. About them, a good part of the tavern was trying to avoid Jones without looking like they were. This was causing an inevitable shuffling about of chairs.

"Watch it!" A familiar voice erupted behind them. "People are _drinking_ here, you sot!"

"Hullo, Lestrade!" Bradstreet called gaily. "How'd your evening go on Bookseller's Row?"

"A poet that doesn't know it…" Lestrade joked grimly, throwing Hopkins into another near-miss with his heart rate. Behind him Gregson was coming up and signaling with both hands for his usual unspeakable brew. "I never got that far, Roger."

"No? I thought the case was open-and-shut on Wilshire."

"It was." Lestrade helped himself to an empty chair and threw himself down. "But he wasn't in his filthy little shop…saw him through the window of G. Loveridge's Restaurant by the Holywell Entrance."

Bradstreet scowled. "You mean that place that has those hot dinners on the second floor?"

"That building with the ABC Railway Guide advertised on the first floor." Hopkins chipped in.

"Really. What was he doing, _in a restaurant_, that you saw him twenty-feet straight up from the outside street through a window?"

Lestrade opened his mouth for details when Gregson shouted at a familiar face, effectively cutting him off: **"Two to one on Godolphin's Gossamer, Edwards!"**

Lestrade grimaced and scoured his ear-canal with a fingertip. "Someday, that man will _finally_ make that clean break with sanity…"

Hopkins grinned, knowing that he'd best lose the expression before Gregson glanced his way. "Well? How, Lestrade?"

"Nothing the stuff a story in the _Strand_ is made of, I'm afraid. He was making such a show about the—lack of—quality of his dinner that he was in the process of pitching it out the window." Lestrade looked to heaven. "People complain too much, but in this case I'll not press it—thank you," he said to the barmaid with his drink.

"Must've been quite the ruckus." Bradstreet tried not to sound too jealous.

"Added disturbing the peace to his book-swindling, and I told G. Loveridge's they could put the broken dishes in a separate suit for damages, plus defamation of the cook's character—he really liked that—and I think the headwaiter is tossing in a charge of his own." Lestrade smirked, for he had saved the best for last. "Annnd, a rather annoyed gentleman decided to throw in his own complaint against Wilshire. Something about how he has a delicate constitution, and Wilshire managed to utterly ruin his digestion."

"Merciful heavens," Hopkins blinked. "One can't make things like that up!"

"Full Moon hit a bit early this month…" Hopkins muttered around a mouthful of bitter. "Or late? How does that go?"

"You're late." Lestrade protested. "Full moon hit in the first week of this month." A splintery sort of crash made him wince. "What is it, Gregson?" He lifted his voice without looking.

"Wasn't me, Ratty."

"Didn't _say_ it was you. Just asked you what it was. There's difference."

"Been writing too many reports again, Lestrade. That makes you just a touch too defensive about your lit-er-al frame of mind." Gregson resolutely planted his big frame next to Lestrade's much smaller one, with a sweating pint clutched between his thick fingers. "Jones." He said succinctly.

"Ah." Lestrade still didn't turn around to look. Hopkins was certain he wouldn't have had that level of fortitude.

Perhaps he was looking at denial. Lestrade was quite firmly facing eyes-forward as he sipped his ale.

Hopkins sighed. He would do this if it killed him. "What's wrong with Jones anyway?" He wondered. "Did John Clay slip his bracelets again?"

"No, not this time." Gregson cleared his throat, glanced into the polished reflecting mirrors above their heads for clues, and lowered his voice just in case. "Jones got a nice'un yesterday night, may be you heard?"

"I heard he rescued a clerk from some sort of madman on King's Road."

"Yes, and very grateful she was too—as well as quite lovely to the eye, but that's not his problem."

"I don't follow you."

"Think about it. If you were Inspector Jones, what mercantile establishment on King's Road would you _not_ want to be associated with?"

Hopkins thought very slowly, reluctant to lift that mental rock. He had a feeling something slimy was underneath. The older, seasoned men waited with polite patience.

Finally, the young man said it: "The Peter Jones?" He squeaked.

"Brightly done." Bradstreet tapped his nose. "The one and the same."

"Need any help guessing the type of newspaper-bits that's about the city?" Lestrade asked wickedly.

Hopkins took a deep breath. "I'm afraid I do." He said. "I know that's an unfortunate coincidence with the names and all, but—"

"Coincidence?" Bradstreet choked delicately on a heather brew that smelled nothing like the original flora what created it. "It's not a coincidence, Hopkins. Not at all."

Hopkins was frustrated. "May I remind you, I've been clawing about the Stately Old Tomes of England in a badly lit library for a fortnight!"

"Oh, that's right." Gregson had the courtesy to blush. "Sorry, Hopkins. How'd your case go?"

"I'm celebrating, aren't I?"

"Could be mourning." Lestrade sniffed. "You're too reserved, Hopkins."

"Don't listen to him." Gregson effortlessly put his elbow into Lestrade's lower ribs. "He's not even English."

"Says the cack-handed _Norman_." Lestrade shot back with equal fervor. "So how did it go?"

"I hope I never see another charter for the rest of the year." Hopkins answered. "This morning, trying to breathe through the dust and doing my best to see around the cobwebs, I _finally_ found the right map. I think we can get the courts to agree the one being put up at the Museum is a forgery of the original."

"Good for you." Vessels clinked.

"So what's this about Jones?" Hopkins whispered. "Was he born in the store or something?"

Gregson spluttered at the thought. "No. He father was a Jones, though, who used to work in the store with his best friend, who was a good, solid fellow named Peter."

"I still don't understand."

"They specialized in women's shoes. Same department where the young clerk worked at when she needed rescuing. In the fracas, Jones wound up using the heel off a dancing-slipper-thing to knock the lunatic cold. The papers made a to-do about one's history coming back to oneself."

"Lucky the heel didn't go through the man's thick head." Lestrade snorted. "Those things can punch the knotholes pop out of a pine-plank floor."

Hopkins thought about it. He didn't want to, but he thought about it.

"How humiliating." He said at last. It seemed as though he ought to say something. He tried to think of something better. "Honest work though."

"You'll note for the record that Jones' decision to join the Met was received with enthusiasm amongst the family." Bradstreet tipped up his glass and sighed in contentment.


	5. Thomas the Nun or Begins with a B

Deep in the bottom of the Paddington Street lodgings that the Lestrades called home, Clea Lestrade was cooking up a storm with Hazel Bradstreet. Had the husbands and children been present, they would have fatally hindered the outcome of the project, for the smells wafting through the rooms was barely to be conceived.

But tonight even Mrs. Collins and the maid were out, the maid accompanying the old landlady to the baths for a few days. Such largess of space led to inspiration…and the wild assortment of Bradstreet and Lestrade children were off on an ambitious week-long sabbatical to the country with the Bradstreet relatives.

The two women were as alike as night is alike to day: one was tall and fair, the other diminutive and dark, but they both had the same efficient energy thrumming through their veins, and they worked easily in the collaboration of a hearty meal for four adults.

"Clea??" Hazel Bradstreet (Mrs. Bradstreet or Mrs. Inspector to the public tongue), lifted her voice and hoped she didn't sound as worried as she felt. "I'll be using all your lard in this!"

From the other side of the kitchen, tiny Clea Lestrade poked her head out from behind a buttressed wall of copper-bottomed pans. "Have we enough for tonight?"

"Well, yes."

"We shall be fine, Hazel." Clea vanished in a blur of blue-black hair and the ring of brightly-gleaming cookware. "I told Geoffrey to bring another tin home."

Hazel paused in the middle of scooping out the last bits of rendered goose fat out of a sorely-treated tin with her fore-fingers. "You can get your goose-fat in quarts? I thought you'd rendered this up yourself."

"Normally I do, when I like the goose in season." Clea tried to talk over the clamber of her own noise-making, and trotted quickly to the edge of the wall where a row of sinks rested. "Otherwise, I have to purchase or make a trade." With a rash of spoilt milk in London, Clea had replaced goose fat for the butter. It was cheaper than butter anyway, and palatable, but everyone looked forward to the return of sweet cream.

"Well, that's clever enough." Hazel approved. "There we go." She pressed the massive dish inside the oven. "Ought to be enough potatoes in there to feed the whole lot at Division A…and Bow Street!"

"You say that, dear, but you don't know what their day has been like." Clea laughed under her breath.

The two women fell silent again; conversation would emerge in fits and sputters as the occasion demanded. They were each working on their prospective tasks for the heavy evening meal planned. The kitchen was warm and cozy against the slight damp chill of the outside, and the small windows wept dirty tears against the small green mask of Clea's potherbs.

"Bother if we aren't out of the white pepper."

"We can survive without it." Hazel paused to wipe her eyes with the edge of her apron.

"But white pepper is so much the better." Clea scowled. "Not as harsh, and I think it's better for you."

"Ah, but men like their pepper black. Because men like a steak pie with mushrooms, or a grill of flank, or sausages, and that's what black pepper is good for. You give them white pepper in the chowder, and mind you they'll reach for the mill as soon as they don't see those little black spots floating on top like so much cinder."

Clea laughed. "True enough. Well there's enough savour as it is…rich fish stock underneath the chowder, and the last of the good shellfish. How does the bread look?"

Hazel glanced at the cooling-shelf, where an assortment of very crusty loaves rested. "I should say they look well enough, seeing as how you had the sponge rising for three days."

"Good things comes to those who wait."

"You've never said that to my Roger while he's waiting for the cabbage to finish up on New Year's!"

"What, is he that hard up for a silver penny?"

Hazel snickered behind a hand whitened with potato-starch. "How's the spinach coming along?"

"Just wants the boiled egg." Worlds of satisfaction rested in the tiny woman's voice, and Hazel didn't blame her. Food was never cheap, and fresh vegetables were not something to squander at any time of the year. The small handful of red spinach leaves mixed with just a bit more of the spotted lettuces marked a triumph of gardening in London.

They would all have just enough of a salad to rest in the palm of one hand, but it would be a welcome treat for four adults who went without the best for the sake of their children.

That led to another thought in Hazel's mind. "I wonder what Agatha is feeding them?"

Clea looked up from her labours. "They have an entire farm to choose from."

"Yes, but I swear the woman hasn't any imagination." Hazel struggled to explain it with a slight sense of guilt. "After all day in the fields, or in the girls' sake the kitchen, they could be sitting down to a pot of boiled turnips with a bit of bacon for flavour."

"You said she makes large meals." Clea pointed out. "They may be bland, but she will feed them."

"Yes…so long as everyone enjoys turnips, mangels, beets, radishes, potatoes and Egyptian onions. She builds her entire pantry around them."

"What, no cabbage?"

"The woman has no luck with head-cabbages…she has a bit of the leaf kind. Makes a dreadful sauerkraut."

Clea grinned. "They will be eating vegetables and _plenty_ of fish. And it will do them all good to be out of London's fog for a bit. I swear the boys come back an inch taller after those jaunts."

"I suppose I'm just being broody again."

"Yes, you are. We haven't had a night to ourselves in what…since last Christmas?"

"What about Hogmanay?"

"One doesn't have Hogmanay to oneself if _your_ husband has a say-so."

Being the competent warriors of the hearth that they were, ten minutes later the food was dispensed, the tablecloth spread, dishes out, and silverware lined. Clea was putting out the bottle of Perry as Hazel refreshed the water-pitcher when the front door opened with a bang.

"And there they are…"

"I'll see to it…" Clea quickly brushed her hands off—she was about to take off her apron at long last—and opened the door to the stairs.

"No, it wasn't." Roger was persisting stubbornly as the two made their way up—Roger first; the way was too narrow for the luxury of walking side by side. "It was the axe-head what got him. The axe-_handle_ was just how it finished up."

"You're splitting hairs, Roger. It was still _murder by axe_!"

"Inspectors..!" Clea lifted her voice. "Time to put away the day and tend to supper!"

Roger of course, stopped in his tracks to fill his lungs through his nose. Geoffrey barely managed not to run into him. "I smell the famous potatoes!" He announced. "But there's something like chives in the air as well…"

"Roger, stop guessing!" Geoffrey pounded his friend in the shoulder. "We'll find out soon enough, let's leave the deductions on the desk!"

"I'll second that motion," Hazel popped out, standing a head above Clea's. "Come and eat. We're without the children, and best we throw ourselves into the moment."

"Though I think a week might be all I can take." Clea admitted under her breath as there was a clattering of chairs.

"I know. I keep wondering what they're up to in our absence."

"Peas." Roger was satisfied. "Peas with chives."

Geoffrey slipped a tolerant look to the women. Both men were slightly flushed with their usual pint on the way home and the coolness of the evening. "Corrigan is getting more of his goose-tins in the morning, dear. That's why I haven't any on me now."

"Well…soon enough we can move back to the butter." Clea assured him. "Though if I could I swear I'd buy a share in some dairy cattle. It might make the milk safer."

"Milk isn't always safe even in the country." Hazel pointed out. "My grandfather always had a flock of milk-sheep for the family…he said sheep were smarter than most cattle when it came to eating the right things."

"Your grandfather was talking about Shetland sheep—and they _are_ smarter. Smarter than most dogs I've known…But they aren't the rule, love." Roger reminded her. "I hope you don't expect me to start crofting with them when we retire."

"No, I wouldn't. I'd be like Clea…purchasing a share of a milk cow. Something short and sturdy, like a Devon…or a Dexter."

"No Dexters." Roger shook his head. "That's the most argumentative breed in the Empire. That lot would hold its own up against _wolves_."

"Eat your peas, Roger." Geoffrey said patiently. He passed the dish for good measure. "You brought them. The least you could do is take the first batch."

"You always act like I'm going to poison you or something." Roger complained. "After all I've ever done for you."

"Which you take back every year for Hogmanay." Geoffrey muttered.

"What about this evening?" Roger protested.

Geoffrey winced to his bones. "I'll concede you the point." He grimaced. "But we both covered for each other, remember?"

"Now what?" Hazel demanded as she measured out steaming layers of heaven among the plates. "Roger, you didn't get into _another_ drunken wager, did you?"

"No, he didn't," Geoffrey filled in just as Roger was about to burst the air of the small room with protests. "Tonight some priceless fool decided to get into the subject of names, and if _that_ didn't lead to the strangest contest north of the Danube!"

"A contest? What of?" Hazel echoed Clea's thoughts.

"You know, dearest, I'm not completely certain…" Roger was as thoughtful as he was unhelpful. "Didn't Gregson start it?"

"I wasn't paying attention around the first part of it." Geoffrey broke a large twist of bread off and passed the basket down. Clea passed him the rosemary-flavoured goose lard at the same time. "Thank you…something about how we had to explain the origins of our first names, and were we at all happy about it."

That was met with the blank expressions such explanations deserved. "I can't say there's anyone I know what's happy with their names all the time." Clea observed. "After all, mine was a mistake because the recorder couldn't spell Clio."

Hazel stabbed her chowder with a spoon. "And my cousins always called me "filbert" when they wanted a rise out of me."

Geoffrey flinched again, unaware of this old trauma. "No wonder you grew into a fire-breathing dragoness."

"You aren't half right." Hazel assured him. "But the extra eight inches helped."

"That's their own fault." Roger broke off bread and handed it to her with a smile. "Everyone knew you were going to top them off!" To the Lestrades: "That side of the family has short men and tall women. Makes for some awkward posing when the camera-man comes around for the yearly portraits."

Geoffrey managed not to disgrace the Perry, but it was a near thing.

"Gregson missed going into middle names by that—" Roger pinched the air. "—much."

"Oh. Middle names can be worse than first ones!" Hazel exclaimed.

"Yes, they're either boring, or the reverse. And not in a good way." Clea sipped her soup. "I have Marie because my mother, God Bless Her, liked to rhyme."

"It suits you." Geoffrey supported her.

"What about your middle names, gentlemen?" Hazel asked wickedly. "I know yours, dear Roger. But I confess I've never been able to get Geoffrey's."

"It starts with a B." Clea helped.

The men promptly turned varying shades of scarlet.

"Hmn." Hazel observed. "We have a problem. Our names are known…but there seems to be a bit of shyness on part of the other team."

"There's nothing upsetting about your middle name, Roger!" Hazel exclaimed. "What's so wrong with Thomas, anyway?"

"It…it isn't that it's Thomas," Bradstreet attempted to explain. "It's _who_ I'm named after."

"Who you—you never told me you were named Thomas after someone." Hazel was all set for a row, but Geoffrey lifted both hands.

"We'll confess if you'll both keep mum."

Hazel and Clea both pretended to ponder that, while the man sweated over the salad.

"I can keep a secret." Clea smiled once she decided the men had been left hanging long enough. "Who is the first Thomas, Roger?"

Bradstreet made a terrible face. "A nun."

"A…" Clea felt the words dry up.

"Sister Thomasina. She saved my life when I was a tot. Diagnosed my jaundice and brewed up some sort of stuff growing on the ground and it cleared up before nightfall."

A delicate silence descended, as everyone considered Roger's position.

"Mum's the word." Clea lifted her palm as if swearing an oath. "Geoffrey, perhaps you could tell Hazel your dreaded secret? Hazel, I promise you, Geoffrey will never, ever call you 'Filbert.'"

Geoffrey sighed as he began pouring out the second round of glasses. "She has to swear mum first." He announced.

Hazel opened her mouth to say that "Filbert" was surely good enough for a guarantee, when she saw Clea and Roger were both nodding at her. _This must be a corker,_ she thought.

"My lips will be sealed, Geoffrey, though I can't imagine why you'd be so upset over a middle name…your nicknames at work are bad enough!" Perhaps it was because she felt a bit defensive over being the only one ignorant at the table, but they all tumbled out: "Ratty, Lamps…and that doctor fellow must be the worst with his description of you being Ferret-faced while being as tenacious as a bulldog."

"Which is _exactly_ why we're keeping mum about it, Hazel." Clea smiled wryly.

"And we'll even have you guess." Geoffrey leaned his elbow on the table and stabbed Hazel with an eyebrow. "Begins with a B. In the weasel family. Known for its bulldog tenacity."

Hazel's mouth slowly dropped.

"Aheh, she's got it." Roger noted.

"Brock?" Hazel strangled.

"Broc'h."

"I've been guessing your middle name for years and I never thought it would be that." Hazel confessed. "I mean…I _did_ think of it, but something made me dismiss it as being transparently obvious." If word got out Geoffrey's middle name meant "Badger" on top of years of Mr. Holmes' and Dr. Watson's observations…on his singleminded approach to life…

"What's in a name?" Geoffrey wondered dryly, and passed Hazel her freshened drink.


	6. Rites of Passage

The New Fellow

There are those who think that the phrase, "There's no justice in this world" does not apply to those who exist within the hallowed halls of Scotland Yard.

Wrong-headed thinking, to quote PC Murcher, is never in short supply.

"Youghal!"

The Irishman nearly leaped out of his badly-damaged chair as Inspector Bradstreet slammed an offering of drink before him. "Here you go, man. One tankard of slightly frozen swill."

"It is _not_ swill, Roger" Youghal corrected but patiently. This conversation had been doing the rounds in various forms ever since his transfer to London less than a week ago.

"Half of Ireland agrees with me." Bradstreet joined his side with a grin gleaming from behind his dark beard and moustaches.

"Of _course_ they do. If there was ever a majority vote all the fun would be out of the fighting." Youghal huddled over the dark drink. "And if the Irish weren't fighting over something, they'd be a dull lot indeed."

"I thought Guinness was black." Gregson mused. "What is that? It looks like roofing tar."

"Tastes like it too."

"Then why are you drinking it?"

"It wakes me up."

"That it will…" Bradstreet mused. He could smell it from where he was. "Can't we get you something else?"

Youghal peered over the thick rim uncertainly. "I thought the tradition was to buy the new fellow the drink of his choice."

"It is…but…well…do you know you _do_ have a choice?"

Laughter sprinkled the table. Jones tapped the surface of the much-scarred wood with his knuckles in his glee. Morton toasted Youghal with his plate of roasted filberts.

"But I'm willing to try something new if it's in a good cause." The boyish-looking man pushed aside his vessel for the moment. "What do you suggest?"

"Nothing Lestrade likes." Gregson said just as the man in question came in.

"I like precious little in life, Gregson." Lestrade snipped back without a pause. He smelled of the rain and several decrepit back-streets. "But what in particular do I like in this conversation?"

"Choice of drink for the newcomer."

"Ah." The small Yarder pulled out the untaken chair, shrugged out of his raincoat, and dropped in it. "Usual." He signaled to the keep.

"What is the usual?" Youghal wondered.

"Whatever was caught swimming today, plus Black cider." Gregson shuddered with exaggerated horror. "Heartburn in a glass."

"Which doesn't happen if you drink it with something." Lestrade shot back with the impatience of a long-standing quarrel. "If you weren't so cheap with your evenings, you'd have a better time of it."

"I am not cheap, you little…" Gregson squinched up his face in an effort to come up with something original. "Well what are you, anyway? A Plymouth duck?"

"Hardly." Lestrade's patience was exaggerated this time.

"Is there even a proper slang term for a Breton?" Bradstreet wondered.

Lestrade didn't answer. He let the exhalation through his nose speak for him as he picked up his chill drink. A towering plate of fried cucumber smelts followed with a side of lemon butter and dill.

"Screech-owls?" Morton wondered. "Oh, wait. That refers to the occupation. You're not a smuggler, are you Lestrade?"

"Not the last time I checked…" Lestrade hauled up a smelt by the tail, swirled it in butter and threw it in his mouth whole. "But I'm usually the last to know about these things."

Knowing snickers met this pronouncement throughout the table. To Youghal's charming lack of comprehension, Bradstreet cleared his throat: "It's a joke, Youghal. Geoffrey has a bad tendency to get tapped for C.I.D. at the last minute. This past year he's been…oh, heavens. Let's see…"

"A smuggler off the Estuary, a tinker, a mute Eye-talian, a Greek netmaker, a wandering tramp named Peavensie…I guess they thought you looked like a Peavensie…" (Lestrade waved a fish-tail at him) "…several Cornishmen…and a beach-comber off the south."

Youghal stared at Lestrade.

"And a German." Lestrade put both hands around his drink at this pronouncement. "I have no idea why someone thought I'd look like a _German_." He groused a bit more and then looked at Youghal. "Been out of twig much, Youghal?"

"Not so much as I'd like." The Irishman confessed. "I like the work, but it's a bit harsh to stay in the Irish Office. Everyone knows me all the way back down to the first Youghals to come out of Youghal, Ireland."

"That can be a problem." Bradstreet agreed. "I'm lucky that I've got such a common name. Almost as common as Gregson's, actually."

"Didn't used to be common." Gregson pointed out.

"Well I'm not at fault for the wave of Bradstreets that came south to find honest work." Bradstreet sniffed in a lordly fashion. "Got a bit tiresome owling cattle from ridge to ridge at the summer territories."

Youghal again was out of his depth. Gregson finished some unmanly sounds of mirth and explained: "The Bradstreets came from alongside one of the Roman Roads that headed north. Nobody knows what they were doing before the Romans came about—they were probably minding their own business, but we have no proof—and the worst thing they were doing was hiding their cattle from ridge to ridge away from the tax assessor."

"They called it owling, but I have no idea why." Bradstreet noted. "Owls known for being sneaky?"

"They call smugglers screech-owls, so that makes sense." Lestrade was through a quarter of his early supper at this point. "Jones, don't you usually keep a dictionary about you?"

"Got tossed in the mud yesterday." Jones said sadly.

"How did that happen?"

"Fell out of my pocket."

"I've seen you put your entire breakfast in your pockets. How did that tiny little book fall out?"

"When I was tossed upside down into a hay-cart." Jones continued his demeanor of resignation in the face of misfortune. "I landed in the hay, but the dictionary…and my notebook…fell into the mud beneath the cart."

"How did you get tossed…" Lestrade's voice trailed off at the man's expression. "Wait till the report, eh?" He guessed. Jones nodded emphatically. "Easy enough." He sipped his cider.

Youghal was doing some arithmetic in his head. "Do you do a lot out of twig, Lestrade?"

"Lord, no. There's no telling when something will come up and they need a shifty-looking, disreputable suspicious-type." Lestrade glowered.

"Admit it. You've been doing more since Dr. Watson wrote you up in such glowing terms." Bradstreet teased.

"Shows how much the doctor knows." Gregson snorted. "Anyone else could have known you were just feeling the effects of too many cups at the Upping the day before."

"Gregson…" Lestrade's eyes narrowed to an amazing degree. "Do me a favour, and stop defending me."

"Just pointing out the obvious. When you've had too much of the hard stuff, you look ready to throw down the nearest pram or knock over a few tombstones."

"He's right. You do." Bradstreet said helpfully.

"Better than what happens to you." Lestrade never turned a hair. "How many times do we have to tell you to stop singing when you're drunk?"

"As I can never remember the previous night, I have no idea." Bradstreet chuckled in a way that made his friends want to pour their drinks down his collar, even though it would have been an unqualified waste of good ale.

"One more time, and we're going to have Mrs. Bradstreet take you in hand." Gregson warned. "That's it, Roger. You're on your last chance."

"Cruel, Tobias. Cruel and unusual."

"But fitting." Jones grinned. "Very fitting." He looked expectantly at Youghal. "So all the Youghals come from the same place?"

"A _small_ little place on the main of Ireland." Youghal explained. "It's actually from _Eochaill_ the old word for 'yew-tree'--don't get me wrong, gents, and it's a lovely place! But a man gets a bit tired of running into relatives when he isn't colliding with some pocket historian who wants to learn all about Edmund Spencer or Sir Walter Raleigh...It can get in the way of the actual pursuit of justice…especially since every elderly lady in the place thinks you can drop all and pull the cat out of the tree, or tell the messenger-boy to hurry up and bring her sherry over, or explain to the grandson why he shouldn't be found inside her little garden at strange hours with a salt-shaker in his hand."

Gregson made a rude sound over his strong ale, and promptly buried it in a plate of sizzling hot chips with salt and barely-cracked peppercorns. Morton silently nicked a handful when he wasn't looking.

"Must be hard to have the name of a whole village behind you." Jones mused.

"It helps if you're long distance." Youghal said without the least bit of rancor. "I hope to be a few generations removed from it all." He sighed. "I had to leave." Was the unsurprising confession. "It was too easy for people to find out where my family lived. At least that I'm pulled out, it isn't as easy to track them down." A low look came to his boyish face and he drew a glyph in the moisture collecting around his drink. "People keep asking if I would be better off if I changed my name, but I can't bring myself to do that."

Lestrade thought there was something a little isolated about the young man (who, sad to say, looked half his age because of the smoothness of his face and the sheer purity of his smile).

"Cheer up, Youghal. Look on the bright side. You were named from a village you actually came from."

Youghal dutifully thought about it, but enlightenment failed to show itself. He frowned in his puzzlement.

Gregson, of course, caught on quickly with his lightning-fast brain. "Right, then. Are we poor, moronic Yarders about to be told how exactly a Breton got a completely landlocked name like Lestrade?"

Lestrade was beginning to feel the effects of half a serving of hard cider on an empty stomach. He leaned forward on the table. "If it will help you sleep better at night, Tobias."

"Indeed it will." Gregson retorted just as grandly.

"In the interest of your decent night's rest, then…" Lestrade leaned back and knocked back half his remaining cider. "We were in Lestrade when the census-takers were in action."

A pause descended somewhat heavily about the table.

"That's it?" Bradstreet demanded. "All that guessing and your people were in the wrong place in the wrong time to get named by the government?"

"As if there's a good time and place to be nabbed by the government." Lestrade said sourly.

"Just…" Gregson lifted both hands in a gesture not unlike a minister about to level a massive prayer for patience just before the demand for retribution. "Lestrade…this doesn't make a bit of sense! What is a Breton doing with a Provencal name? It doesn't…It…" He gave up in stages, spluttering all the way.

"Hmn." Jones leaned his chin on his hand and pondered the matter slowly. "Is that why you say your name "Lestrade-rhymes-with-a-garden-spade" instead of "Lestrade-rhymes-with-a-rod?"

Lestrade found it was his turn to frown as he waded through the other's less than clear question. "Erhum…" He cleared his throat. "I suppose so?"

"I mean," Jones explained patiently (he was just a little more tipsy than Lestrade), "that you keep the Provencal way of pronouncing Lestrade. Ever notice whenever one of the toffs look for him, they always say his name the other way?"

"And they look at him oddly, like he doesn't know how to say his own name." Bradstreet nodded sagely.

"Bloody hell I don't know how to say my own name!" Lestrade blustered. "I might be stuck with it, but I don't know a man present who can say otherwise!"

"No offense, Geoff. He's just noting the Continentals say it differently, and they act like Lestrade's Cockney or something."

"I'll be proud to claim Cockney before I claim French." Lestrade snorted.

"Now that's not very nice of you." Gregson scolded lightly. "You mean to tell me there isn't a single bit of foreign blood in you from all those centuries your stunted little people were living over there?"

"Stunted little" is redundant grammar, Tobias." Jones pointed out with the sort of support that can only be invoked when one is fast into the bliss of a good brandy.

"What about stunted _or_ little?"

"I have no idea."

"Well?" Gregson swayed slightly. "Out with it, Lestrade. No foreign wimmin the sailors brought home with them?"

Lestrade's eyes narrowed again. What a pity Gregson was too far gone to notice. "I suppose we might count my grandmother." He admitted. "She was definitely brought over from long-distance."

"There you are!" Gregson smacked the long-suffering table in triumph. "What did I tell you! So where did you come from?"

"Wales."

Gregson's thick jaw fell open. "God almighty, you idiot. The Welsh don't count!"

"Why don't they?"

"Because…they're Welsh, you moron!"

"Yes, I think you just said something along those lines…but what are you babbling about?"

"The Welsh are the same as the Bretons!"

"Oh, they are not." Lestrade was really showing signs of annoyance now. "Where do you come up with these things?"

"Lestrade, you fool, any language that has an inordinate use of the letter 'z' in their babbling has got to be related."

"By that stick you can say you're related to anyone off the Saxon Throne, you fat-handed…"

The conversation deteriorated in ten-degree increments after that. Morton, Bradstreet and Jones took pity on the increasingly alarmed looking Youghal as words of varying descriptive skills flew about the air like vampire bats.

"Don't worry about it." Bradstreet patted him on the back. "This happens about every other evening we collect here."

"And, by the way," Morton quietly pushed Gregson's forgotton plate to Youghal, "Welcome to the Yard."


	7. Prideful

Inspector Bradstreet was content at his work. His peaked cap was worn with pride; he polished the buttons of his frogged coat with the same amount of attention a groom gave to the Earl's best horse. _And _he kept an arsenal of boiled handkerchiefs in his deep pockets in case of emergencies.

One might think with justification that his world was built precisely upon specific and narrow pathways, divertible by no influence. They would be wrong in that thinking; Bradstreet used his little ways to afford a sense of serenity and some degree of control over his life.

As his best friend had once said, "A riot in Hyde Park? No problem. Bradstreet has a clean handkerchief."

But all long days must end upon a proper note, and for Bradstreet, Saturdays were met with a few placid rounds at the Elegant Barley.

The large man hummed a ditty to himself and strolled merrily down the wet streets of London. The Runners had been in fine form today, what with little dramatics, but acres upon acres of most gratifying paperwork had been cleared from desks, files, and dustbins. The offices hadn't looked this good since the Blind Beak ruled. Speaking of which, someone had even found one of the old uniforms languishing in a dusty corner. Poor Landon had been the only one who could wear it; just watch him get stuck in the mouldy thing for the parades the next time they needed a Robin Redbreast!

Several Constables waved their respect and he returned it cheerfully. Hazel would have the brood down with her hot soup with bacon and if he knew their children—all of them—they would eat until they reached the point of grogginess and then lurch sleepily off to bed. He, however, would pause and have a pleasant hour socializing before he could get home. It was a definite improvement upon his nerves.

The newsman gave him a copy of the morning paper at half-price and he took it. The girls were always looking at images of the latest dresses to copy and to colour up. Garrett and Brian only wanted the sensationalist bits. Hazel clipped out the articles on science and medicine and oversaw the mixing of the flour-water paste. He whistled through his thick beard and scurried up the raised step, pushing open the door of the Barley…

…and greeting a stiff, difficult sight indeed.

He saw Gregson first. The pallid man was wearing his most infuriating expression—that of smug delight. Bradstreet sighed. He knew what usually caused that expression and looked the other direction.

Yes. There was Geoffrey, in the opposite corner and ready to chew tin nails and sneeze out brass clocksprings.

"How is it, gents?" Bradstreet sighed. "I thought the two of you were going to agree to get along?"

"Which we did until Gregson made a spectacle of himself." Lestrade snarled. Really, he had the face suited for it.

"Oh, you exaggerate just a bit, Lestrade." Gregson informed him in that sort of voice that, in a younger boy, would encourage a sound caning. Gregson was good at that sort of voice.

Bradstreet sighed for the third time and went to the front, picked up his usual drink (a Midlands-brewed golden lager), and returned to the centre of the crossfire. And then he promptly ignored the two contenders in favour of a pleasant hello to PC Barrett. "How is it, Barrett?" He asked. "Ready to patrol over on the East?"

"Ready enough tomorrow, Bradstreet." Barrett was lax enough to go without titles when they were both off-duty. "Yourself?"

"We ought to know by morning if the extradition papers are needed. Make certain you've got your eyepatch, would you?" He took a drink. "Did this start before or after they got here?"

"Oh, before. Long, long before." Barrett grimaced slightly. "It's all Gregson's doing." He whispered.

"I figgered that from the way he was smirking." Bradstreet confessed. "Game of the darts?"

"Ha'penny toss?"

They set up the game on the other side of the tavern. Behind them and over the usual rise and fall of conversation, two particular men were having their own rise and fall of their own conversation, which managed to be completely one-sided as neither was disposed to listen to the other.

"So how did it start?"

Barrett scuffed and tossed a dart almost in the middle. "It started when they had to show up in court together for the Holywater Sprinkler of Hollowell."

"Oh, heavens. They had to get along for that case!"

"They did, they did, Bradstreet. They had to. The Defense was painting it all like a poor madman who was trying to defend himself against the people he thought were the one who'd wronged him in childhood…"

"The Holywater Sprinkler makes Constantly Mad Jackson look like a Lapp-lander! How did that go over?"

"It went over dreadful, if you must know. Still, there was some slight credibility to the jury because he was sitting there meekly inside his manacles, head down like an overgrown child." Barrett threw and promptly won another ha'penny off his opponent. "So they had to present a united front. It was Gregson who ciphered out where he was hiding, and Lestrade was the one who persuaded his own family to help turn him in…" He sighed. "Hard to say what would have happened if the Defense hadn't been from Brightwater."

"What does Brightwater have to do with it?"

"Brightwater's as far from London as you can get and still pay fealty to the Crown, old fellow."

"I'm aware of that. I'm also aware that it's a heavenly piece of sod and full of smiling people, bucolic farmland and—"

"—_All the social niceties of a turnip boiled in beer!"_ Lestrade was bellowing.

Bradstreet flinched and dropped his dart; it stuck on the plaster wall but Barrett never turned a hair.

"It's been going on like that since they showed up." The PC explained. "Anyway, the Defense mistook Lestrade for Gregson, and—"

"How the hell?!" Bradstreet yelped. Heads turned. Bradstreet turned, his great neck swiveling, and took a look at his mates. Lestrade still looked like Lestrade, and Gregson looked like Gregson. "There's half a foot and a few stone between them!"

"You look a little excited, Bradstreet." Gregson drawled. He passed an infuriating look to Lestrade. "What do you think, Gregson?"

"I think one of us needs glasses, Lestrade." Lestrade never missed the turn of a hair. "How's the Grozet?"

"Awful. Same as usual."

"They look nothing alike!" Bradstreet rinsed his throat out with his lager and took a deep breath while wiping beer-foam from his own beard.

"Telling him about this morning?" Gregson guessed wearily. "If you just stick to the bald facts, we'll _only _be here six or so hours."

"The Defense thought I was Gregson, and he started on about how I'd used needless force against the bastard." Lestrade could get blunt with his language when slightly drunk and miles from the nearest woman, child, or priest. "By the time he caught on that the jury was laughing, it was too late."

"Life in Bedlam." Gregson said in satisfaction. "Couldn't happen to a nicer mutilator."

"Nice is your word. _You _didn't have to clean up after his victims." Lestrade still looked a little grey at the thought. "Or did you ever bother to see what a few nails driven into a cricket-bat can do to a brain?"

"Thanks but no thanks, Lestrade. Don't have to. I'm not the one of us who has a chunk missing from his imagination. Did you ever talk to that phrenologist?"

"Not since he said my browline was indicative of poor hand-writing."

Gregson choked slightly. "Well, that's a stranger to reason for you. Anyone here can vouch that you write as neatly as a spinster schoolmarm."

"Gregson, stop defending me. You aren't good at it." Lestrade clutched his bottle with both hands—a sure sign that he was hoping to put it to traumatic use.

Barrett sighed. "Where were we?"

"Why they're fighting."

"Oh. Gregson, of course."

"Well, of course it's Gregson. It's always Gregson." Bradstreet complained. "Gregson can hiccup and make Lestrade pop his bowler."

"That's because Gregson has the unfair advantage." Barrett confided under his breath.

"What unfair advantage?" Bradstreet was interested despite himself.

"Gregson learned how to be infuriating to get even with all his older cousins. He got himself a great deal of skill in the art."

"And that's the truth."

"Lestrade was able to ignore Gregson—completely ignore him—last week and Gregson's been burning to show him up ever since."

Bradstreet sighed. "So h---"

_"—and take a few lessons!_" Gregson exclaimed.

_"After you!"_ Lestrade exclaimed right back.

"They've been doing this for _how _long?"

"Three hours. They've barely had enough time to drink a single bottle each, they've been so busy shouting."

"Good Lord."

"—_the bill to me if it makes you sleep better!_" Gregson shouted.

"Think I won't?" Lestrade was standing up and leaning on his palms against the tabletop. "I'll make certain my landlady hears it straight from you!"

"I'm not afraid of an old woman!" Gregson riposted. "Present company included!"

"Oh, dear!" Bradstreet mashed his darts safely into the target with one stroke and blocked oncoming waves with his body. For a moment he sympathized with the Pharaoh's Army went caught between the opposing waves of the Red Sea. One hand went to grab Gregson by the collar and hoisted him up.

Simply out of sheer animal surprise, Lestrade backed away, all the better to take in the sight.

"What the devil?" Gregson puffed. His pasty face was turning cherry-red. "Bradstreet, put me down!"

"Are you mad?" Bradstreet wanted to know. "Your brighter brain cells aren't going to mean a thing against Lestrade and you know it!" He gave the Yarder a kindly shake. "You may be smarter, Tobias, but you're by far much slower, and by the time you finished smirking, Geoffrey will have dusted your nose for you. Geoffrey," Bradstreet continued, "You know he does this just to get you angry. Why can't you just ignore him?"

"I did ignore him!" Lestrade exclaimed. "I ignored him for a whole week and it's made him worse than ever!"

Bradstreet had been afraid of that. He sighed. "So what happened?" He wondered. "What does Gregson have to do with your landlady?"

Everyone, from plainclothed to uniformed, began edging closer to the wall while still wrapped in a cloak of nonchalance. Bradstreet took note of it anyway.

"It was all fine while we had lunch at the Hammersmith," Lestrade began.

"You call that fine?" Gregson blurted. Astonishingly, he was turning red from indignation. "Lestrade, you can take it if you want to, but I'll never stand that sort of disgrace!"

"If you only knew how batty that woman is—"

"Stop." Bradstreet shook Gregson again. "What happened, Tobias?"

"We were eating lunch when the woman next to us started in on her little boy. Told him that if he didn't eat those mushy peas, she would have us go over and arrest the tyke." Gregson continued to purple. "Well, I'd had enough of that! People are always using us as a threat to make children behave, like we're worse than monsters! So I stood up, listed my name, how long I'd been on the Force, my height, how much I weighed—"

"Off by a few stone," Lestrade cut in snidely.

"—and my awards and merits. And I finished by saying I 'd never eaten a single pea in my life, Eddie, and I wasn't about to."

"And then everyone in the Hammersmith clapped." Lestrade said sourly. "Eddie was quite happy to get a lifetime excuse off peas."

Bradstreet was about to chuckle, but a look at Lestrade stopped him. "And this has what to do with your landlady?"

"That witch is her daffy sister!" Lestrade exclaimed. "She's in for the week! What am I supposed to do now? I can't go home!"

"Oh." Bradstreet blinked. "Daffy, eh?"

"Abnormally so."

Bradstreet looked at Gregson. Gregson was trying not show the slightest bit of guilt at what he'd done to Lestrade.

"C'mon home with me." He offered. "The boys miss having their punching-bag around."

"That's a wonderful notion, Roger." Lestrade shuddered.

"Hazel has pease porridge cooking. With bacon." He added. "Yellow splits."

"If he doesn't take it, I will." Gregson piped up.

"Shut it, Tobias. Your wife would toss you out on the street if you let another living being hand you a _fork_, much less a meal."

"Who said that?" Gregson was already whirling to rip the spine out of whoever had been foolish enough to point out the truth.

Bradstreet took the opportunity as golden. In a moment they were gone, with only a startled "whuk" from Lestrade hanging in the air in the space he had just occupied.

It was a good and definite three-and-twenty minute's walk before either man slowed down enough to talk.

"Shed that, man." Bradstreet took the bottle out of his friend's hand and gave it a merry toss to a passing Glassman. "I've got better than that at home!"

"You are impossible." Lestrade scowled like a thunderstorm. He resembled one more than usual with the cloud of steam rising from his overheated body in the cool night.

"One might say the same about you and Gregson."

"Only when we're together." Lestrade sniffed. "Arrogant piece of work, he is."

Yes…Gregson was arrogant and Lestrade was defensive. The two didn't get along, and Bradstreet didn't think, after fifteen years in the C.I.D, that Lestrade could learn to get along with yet one more overweening character.

Of course, that was before a private consulting madman set up his shingle on Montague Street.


	8. Excessive

Gregson was content in his office and even more content with the neat, clean glory of three successfully solved cases for the week. While he'd done more than his share of the work in the solving, there was the fact that his reports for the quarterly would make note of a concluded diamond-theft, a scurrilous little blackmailer, and a rather desperate case of mistaken identity.

The big man hummed to himself smugly. _Lestrade_ hadn't ever solved three cases this quickly…even when someone up and confessed! He leaned back in his chair for a moment, noting by his pocket-watch (a gift from a grateful town after solving a case of murder in their limits), and pulled out his smoking-case.

He was halfway through his self-celebratory cigar when the clap of the doors down the hall and corresponding puff of draught upon the floorboards told him someone else had made it in despite the weather. Quick, hurried steps clipped their way up the hallway. Lestrade, Gregson knew. Their rooms were adjacent, which had to be deliberate cruelty on the part of the CI.

"I don't know, Constable!" Lestrade's reedy voice was positively uplifted with his anxiety; a hairs-breadth from screeching he stamped like an elephant to his office while some poor PC followed awkwardly in his wake. Just as Gregson was about to resume his cigar, Lestrade reversed direction with alarming speed and hung himself into the doorframe in a horizontal position.

"Gregson!" He barked.

"Lestrade!" Gregson shot back with equal fervor; a Newtonian force with a corresponding force.

"S'you still have that medical dictionary?"

"Right here!" Gregson snapped. "What the bloody-all for?"

"What's a phobia?"

"You know bloomin' well what a phobia is!" Gregson was letting his smoke die out. He puffed frantically and wondered what that odd smell was in the room.

"Is it not considered an excessive fear?" Lestrade snarled through his teeth.

"Why don't you look through the dictionary yourself and find out? You didn't fake reading in school, did you?"

"I can't touch anything right now!" Lestrade held up his hands. There was a peculiar shininess to his gloves, tracking down to his wrists. "I'm covered with slime!"

"Erghhh…" Gregson made a show of rising to his feet, cigar between his teeth, and poked around the pages of the dictionary. "Says here a phobia is an excessive fear…what are you asking for? You know that!"

"I need to be absolutely sure!" Lestrade was gone again like he'd never existed. Gregson watched a battered up and glistening PC (glistening?) Brown go into Lestrade's office. The door shut; murmured voices struggling through the wall. Something wasn't making sense, whatever it was.

Gregson promised himself he wouldn't ask.

He went back to his cigar.

The door flung open next to him, and Lestrade's now-gloveless but still alarmingly shiny hands were on the frame.

"What's the phobia for toads?" He demanded.

"Toads?" Gregson nearly swallowed his cigar. "Lestrade what the deuce is going through your fog-stunted little mind?"

"It's a case with a murder in it, and I don't want this fool to go free!" Lestrade exclaimed. "Now what's the phobia for toads?"

Gregson stared at him. "Whatever it is, it's got phobia on the end of it."

"Oh, for…"

Lestrade breathed through his nostrils and pulled out his little notebook (something like slug-marks were all over the cover). He paged up something and frowned at it. "Would a toad-phobia be buf…ono…phobia?"

"Sounds right…_Bufo_ means toad you know." Gregson never let Lestrade forget he took several Latin courses to improve himself.

"Just look it up, please kindly, and verify the word is correct!!"

Gregson's page-turning took much longer this time around. Lestrade tapped his foot on the floor impatiently. On the other side of the thin wall, something that sounded a great deal like a grown man in an awkward Constable's uniform was thumping about, as if in pursuit of something.

"Bufonophobia." Gregson announced. "There it is. Now why do you—"

"I got it, sir!" (this sounded like a grown man in a Constable's awkward uniform, halfway beneath Lestrade's small desk). "Where's the box, sir?"

The big man growled at the empty space in the doorway. "—want to know?" He finished under his breath.

He listened.

Nothing was happening.

Yet.

He muttered under his breath, snapped the book shut, and made his way back to the desk.

"Gregson!"

"Oh, for WHAT?!" Gregson bellowed at the too-familiar sight in his doorway. "WHAT, Lestrade? WHAT?"

"I need your opinion on something."

"Well someone call the Bishop. I'm in Heaven and don't know it."

"Shut it."

"You want my opinion or not?"

"Gregson…pay close attention. I am asking you for your opinion before you can give it freely. Do we understand each other?"

"I understand that if you don't explain yourself I'm going to wring your neck, Ratty. We do understand that, correct?"

"I just need to know the opinion of a man who has had more education than I have, because I can't afford to be wrong in this!"

"Lestrade_, your wife_ had more education than you, and she's a woman!"

"I should certainly hope so." Lestrade shot back in scathing tones. "Because I'm the odd sort that prefers my wife to be a woman. Any other sort of wife is illegal the last time I picked up a newspaper—which was this morning."

"Aren't you getting clever."

"Gregson…just tell me what would be your definition of excessive? I need to state the argument for the court in case this comes up!"

"Excessive?" Gregson repeated. "Excessive…fear?"

"Spot on."

Gregson pondered. "What does this have to do with toads and a murder case?"

"My victim dropped dead of a heart attack when their nephew mailed them a toad "as a joke", they said."

"Lestrade, there is no way in God's Grey London you can prove it was an act of murder."

"I think I can."

"Lestrade, aren't you aware of the things I say about you behind your back? You aren't that smart!"

"Gregson, the dead man was healthy enough for a sixty-year old in all ways but was afraid of toads."

"Mailing him a toad can't be seen as an act of murder."

"The nephew inherits everything."

"Common story, Lestrade. You've not a leg to stand on."

Lestrade sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose, closing his eyes. "Gregson, if I can prove he was frightened to death, I think I've got it."

"You're barking." Gregson declared.

"No, seriously."

"I'd have to see the dead man to believe it."

"No, you don't. All you need to do is see the toad." Lestrade turned his head in the other direction. "Brown! Did you get it?"

"Xenopus, Mr. Lestrade, sis." Brown said hastily. "X-e-n-o-p-u-s."

"Xenopus…write that down, would you please?" He scrawled it in his own notebook, and turned back to Gregson. "If you even saw this thing, you'd know. I had a hard time keeping my breakfast."

"Oh, for heaven…how bad can it be, Lestrade?" Gregson folded his arms over his chest with the deepest skepticism he could conjure.

"For starters, they're rather large."

"So are natterjacks."

"And they're flat."

"Interesting."

"Covered in the thickest coat of slime you can ever imagine." Lestrade held up his now bare hands, but his cuffs still held a slippery gleam.

"Eh."

"The eyes are on the top of the head."

"Sounds delightful."

"They have claws."

"Oh, for…Lestrade, you don't have to exaggerate."

"I'm not. This sort of toad has claws." Lestrade looked back. "Brown! Did not this…" He looked into his notebook. "Xenopus have claws?"

"On each toe, sir." Brown called back.

"Good Lord."

"And things like tentacles on its head…"

Gregson felt his gorge hoist anchor.

"And they have teeth." Lestrade finished. "So help me, they have teeth in their uppers."

"Lestrade, I knew you'd come to grief as Bradstreet's friend, but I never imagined you'd be foolish enough to drink from his flask…"

Lestrade wordlessly pulled something out of his pocket wrapped in his handkerchief. Gregson's gorge went from a free-floating sensation to a quick drop-anchor. With the iciest of glares, Lestrade dismantled the little folds of the cloth inch by inch and abruptly held the centre contents on his palm out to his rival.

Gregson felt sick.

"That…" Gregson tried to swallow. He managed it, and was pleased enough to do it again. Several times. "That's…an…interesting little pet you have there."

"It's dead." Lestrade pointed out in that same frozen calm. "I don't keep dead things for pets. It's dead."

"Yes, I can see that, Ratty…I do have eyes…ahem…why is it dead?"

"Offhand? I'd say because one of its back legs was bitten off."

Gregson sat down and shuddered. He wished for his coat. "What would have bitten off the back leg?"

"There was another toad in the box, and it was _much_ bigger than—"

"Shut it, Geoffrey Lestrade…_Shut it right now_." Gregson swallowed again. "So…ah…the nephew knew of his uncle's phobia…and mailed him the box…and he opened the box and naturally had a heart attack?"

"Yes." Lestrade growled. "Hence the problem."

Gregson felt tired. He stared at the little man. "Lestrade…your stupidity is rubbing off on me. _What_ is the problem??"

Lestrade took a deep breath and held it. "The nephew is the brother-in-law of Barrister Barbermonger."

Gregson felt worse. "Oh, no. That long-winded, snakeish, slippery…"

"Want to bet he's already contacted him to get him out of a murder charge?"

"Not taking that bet…but what exactly are you thinking?"

"I'm thinking that Barbour will argue that the murder victim wasn't killed by his phobia."

Gregson thought about it very hard. "Why would he do that?" He asked at last.

"Because, Gregson." Lestrade explained patiently, "A phobia is an _excessive_ fear."

"…_and_..?" Gregson pressed.

"What's so excessive about being afraid of something like _this_?" He held out the amphibian corpse for closer inspection.

Gregson wished he hadn't.

He also wished for several things that hadn't happened within the past hour, but if wishes were fishes the Thames would be clear.

"Well." He said at last. "I suppose you just might have something there."

"It's all I've damned well got, Gregson! And if you can't help me with this, we could very well see another act of murder before the year's out—or the fortune is spent—whichever comes first."

"Why so sure? Gregson knew at this point it was not a good idea to ask Lestrade any questions whatsoever…but he couldn't help himself.

"Because the little sot's next of kin after the deceased is his great-aunt Mathilde MacDouglas."

"As in the Soap Fortune?"

"Yes." Lestrade's eyes narrowed to the limit. "And not only is she willing to give us all a tenner for solving this, she made damned well sure I knew what her phobia was."

Gregson knew he would regret asking. 'Which is?"

"Emetophobia." Lestrade had to look at his notebook again, but Gregson was impressed at his pronunciation.

Gregson thought back, mentally translating.

"Why would a little old lady have an excessive fear of vomiting?"

"I don't know, but please do feel free to ask her. I must have missed that when I was speaking with her."

"Missed, my eye." Gregson climbed to his feet. He thought it over. It didn't take long. "All right." He sighed. "I'm in. Let's see if we can't get all the facts together for court."


End file.
